THE EFFECT OF DECONGESTANTS AND TOPICAL STEROIDS ON THE NASAL BREATHING AND NASAL CYCLE

Abstract

We registered nasal cycles and the mucociliary transport time in 40 adults: 20 men (18-71) and 20 women (18-70) with acute rhinosinusitis. Subjects had no signs of other systems’ pathologies, bad habits and other ENT organs’ diseases. Patients were randomly divided into 2 groups of 20 people each (10 men, 10 women). Patients of the group 1received intranasal topical decongestant (a spray of 0.1 % xylometazoline solution), patients of the group 2 received intranasal glucocorticosteroid (mometasone furoate spray). Every subject was tested with rhinoflowmeter «Rhinocycle» for 16-18 hours excluding the night sleep period. The mucociliary transport time was recorded before the study and 1 hour after the intranasal spray administration. The graphs of relative airflow volume’s fluctuations were made.We found that airflow fluctuations were predominantly irregular before the intranasal spray administration in both groups. The relative volumetric flow increased significantly in both groups after topical sprays administration. It was higher in the group 1than that in the group 2, however, the difference was statistically insignificant (p 0.05). The average duration of nasal cycle’s fluctuations in patients of the group 1 increased, in the subjects of the group 2, on the contrary, it decreased (p 0.05). Besides, topical decongestants administration significantly improved nasal breathing, but adversely affected the ciliated epithelium’s transport function and airflow fluctuations’ orderly cyclicity. In contrast, the glucocorticosteroid administration decreased the mucociliary transport time and contributed